


In the Lost Lands

by deathwailart



Series: Dragon Knights [OLD] [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Disappeared Parents, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Gen, High Fantasy, Knights - Freeform, M/M, Painful Truths, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:36:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some truths that hurt to tell, old wounds that never healed but wounds can't fester forever.  Before the journey up to Jormsen, Gunhild has to admit to Hákon the truth about his parents and how a northern boy of noble blood ended up in the lush forests of the south.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Lost Lands

Gunhild left Jormsen before she could have a child but Hákon has always felt like he was at least a little bit hers. Not her blood but there's a lot the boy (oh but he's not a boy anymore, he's growing up fast, in love with his best friend with the pair of them determined to live out some sort of tale from the oldest of days, Áki and Stígandr) doesn't know about where he comes from that Gunhild should tell him in absence of his mother and father. It's selfish, really, to keep so much to herself but it's all she has and this brilliant, talented, often ridiculous young man is all she has to remember another life.  
  
"Hákon," she calls out and two heads jerk up because there are times she's convinced that Hákon and Brynjar are one soul sharing two bodies and please, Solace, let them both survive what's to come. "I need to speak to you alone." He looks put out for a moment but Brynjar nudges him with a shoulder and Hákon heads her way – Brynjar is the one content to be supportive and Hákon wouldn't be who he is without him. Brynjar's the one with sense (still more than enough cheek and boldness but she can see the man he'll be after a few years with the nomads. If they both make it through their trials. But she knows how strong they are and the strength they come from and she's made sure they've had the best training to be provided in Moja. They'll be fine. Still, they're the closest she has to a family, she's earned the right to worry about them.  
  
"Brynjar and I are fine, better than fine," he says quickly once he draws to a halt in front of her, still lanky, not fully grown into his shoulders.  
  
"Trust me boy, we are _all_ well aware of you two being back on good terms," she replies dryly before taking a grip of one bicep to lead him out of the main room of the tavern they're stopping in. "This is about you. About Jormsen and where you come from." She can feel the tension in his body the minute she says it so with a sharp tug, she marches him in the direction of her room – as the weapons trainer and the one with responsibility she is the only one to have her own room here – and gives him a push towards one of the chairs, wincing at how heavily he falls into it, old wood and leather that's seen better days creaking under him. Now that he's here though there's a reluctance and that old, old pain deep in her breast and she panics though she doesn't let him see that. There's so much at stake now, the last months of his training, the matter of having to sleep with some girl he's never even met to produce an heir because those are Jormsen's terms and they must be obeyed at all times. But he needs to know this before she risks losing him forever. She has to do things right as the closest thing to a mother he's ever had. "I've left this too late but there are things you need to know – and you can tell Brynjar, I know there's no such thing as secrets when it comes to the pair of you," Hákon blushes at that, ducking his head where Brynjar would just grin, slow and sure and confident. It gives her a longer moment to think of how she's supposed to do this, where to start, what she can omit, what she'll have to force out past the inevitable lump in her throat.  
  
"Gunhild?" It's rare he sounds uncertain now. The last time he ever sounded truly conflicted to her ears was the day he realised he was in love with his best friend when she'd tracked him through the forests that marked the human portion of Moja's boundaries. He was fifteen then. Confgra's flame, how did two years pass so quickly?  
  
"You and Brynjar both know that your parents are northerners," she begins, looking out the dirty window into darkness, "and that you come from noble blood." Turning, she sighs heavily and crosses the room to sit opposite him, wishing she had some alcohol to ease the conversation along. Hákon nods because he knows this, knowing where you come from is important to all of them and his and Brynjar's stand out as her own does. Moja has its own naming traditions and the names have different pronunciations to those Gunhild grew up with and it's led to them having to teach Hákon and Brynjar pronunciation separately; Moja's humans, elves and nymphs all speak the same language, no distinctions anymore, so far from Jormsen, conquered long ago and now working together in their own way. She's already lectured all of them about Jormsen traditions. They will be silent on all other places and follow the rules of the elders no matter how wrong it seems to them.  
  
"What's so important? I mean, I know...I know that being noble is meant to mean something," Hákon says, uncertain and sullen – he doesn't care that he's nobility because to him it only means something if you're an elf now that the human race no longer rules even itself. He's just Hákon and it suits him fine. She's glad of that, she truly is but sometimes she thinks in what ifs. "I want to be a Dragon Knight, I want to do what I can for our people and be with Brynjar, that's all I want."  
  
"Sweet boy," she whispers, leaning forward to cup his cheek, stubble against her palm and his surprise at her gesture makes him look achingly vulnerable. He looks so much like his mother, that nose, the hair and eyes. "I knew your mother."  
  
He covers his shock well. He tenses and pulls away from her touch. She lets him; this won't be easy but he needs to know.  
  
"Your mother was of noble blood, we were best friends growing up in Jormsen. She was fierce and funny, you look like her. She had a brother, Acke. He was a Dragon Knight but he waited until he was older than you both are – he had two sons, Björn and Folke-"  
  
"I have cousins?" Hákon interrupts, sitting forward.  
  
"Had."  
  
"Had," he echoes, crumpling under the weight of what they're not saying. "What happ- do I want to know?"  
  
"They were executed," she explains. Hákon doesn't want to know, Hákon wants to stay ignorant and innocent but she cannot let him be a boy much longer or he'll end up dead, he'll be too soft and she has to make him hard enough to withstand what is to come. "Acke foolishly attacked an elven raiding party years ago and they took Björn and Folke as slaves. Acke went to reclaim them and the three were slain – the northern elves are different to those here, Jormsen is different to everywhere else. It's grim boy, hard and cold and brittle." Hákon nods, a jerking staccato motion, swallowing hard. Maybe she should have allowed Brynjar to be here to hold him, to be his support but he has to be able to stand alone and this is her story to tell him. "Acke and your mother never got on. Maren...she was a dreamer. Never wanted to be a Dragon Knight or warrior, didn't want to have lots of children or learn to farm or smith – Maren wanted to explore." Gunhild can remember all too well years of complaining to Maren's back when she dragged her off on some foolish adventure into the woods to talk to giants or meet the nymphs, chasing what she sword blind were fairies. Maybe Maren could see them. Maren always saw what others didn't.  
  
She doesn't realise she's stopped talking until Hákon clears his throat, bringing her back to the present.  
  
"Your father was a nomad, same as Brynjar's mother and father – they were all northern born, raised in Jormsen like we were. Maren never paid them much mind, she didn't have many friends, they thought she was," she flushes, strangely protective, not wanting to give Hákon the wrong idea yet she doesn't want to lie to him either because this is the only way he'll ever get to know his mother at all.  
  
"She was?" He prompts.  
  
"Odd. Different. Head in the clouds. She refused to do as the elders told her and with her parents still alive and Acke training then they couldn't do much to stop her. I never knew why we got on so well, she used to tease me terribly and if we hadn't been friends, I would never have been in the trouble I was in but all the same, people were drawn to her. When she spoke, they listened. I think that scared the elders."  
  
"Why? You say they have their ways, that they do things different, not to do or say this or that."  
  
"This is something you'll need to experience to understand. I need you and Brynjar to go there and live it for a time, I can't push my experiences on you. Do you follow?"  
  
Hákon takes his time, thinking it through but he's a bright boy and gets it. "I think so."  
  
"Right. Maren didn't want to do what they wanted her to do. It's not to say she didn't care for people or duty but she thought we were all going about it the wrong way and oh how her and Acke and her par- your grandparents – would argue with her." It's impossible to stop herself from smiling fondly and perhaps she can let herself be something different tonight because she loved Maren, misses her sharply every now and then and Maren's the reason they're all down here in the first place.  
  
"What about my father?"  
  
"He was called Halvard, a very skilled hunter who came down here for adventure along with Dagny and Orvar, Brynjar's mother and father."  
  
"Shouldn't he be here? We don't- or if he knows he's never-" Hákon bites his lip, Gunhild sighs because these boys are ridiculous and she will wring the neck of anyone who comes between them.  
  
"Brynjar doesn't know anymore than you do but I couldn't tell you both. You'll know better how to tell him and this is your mother's story Hákon." He doesn't look terribly convinced but his curiosity clearly wins out because he nods and gestures for her to continue. "Maren was twenty when she finally had you, that's considered old up there for having your first child, not that she was there then. She didn't have much interest in children or being with anyone. She just wanted to see the world. I think that's why she fell for Halvard when he came back north with Dagny and Orvar.  
  
"Halvard grew up just like us and you'll understand once you've been in Jormsen a few days, that's why I'm telling you this now. Halvard didn't want to be a Dragon Knight so he joined up with the nomads to go see the world and Dagny and Orvar went with him. Orvar was a healer, they're in short supply on the road and where Orvar was a great hunter, Dagny was the tracker, I swear she was part wolf or eagle, the way she could pick out details, hear the smallest of whispers. They came here, they stayed for a time – they were sixteen when they left, the three of them and a band of nomads – then came back when they were around nineteen. They changed, they saw the world differently and couldn't tell a soul, not even their own people."  
  
"Except they did."  
  
It's the way Hákon says it, soft, accusatory, enthralled. Oh he's his mother's son and that's what she fears sometimes, why she's so grateful he's grounded by Brynjar so he doesn't fly away because she can't lose him the way she lost Maren.  
  
"Halvard was more my friend than your mother's before – we trained together. I was good with any weapon they gave me and well we were all the same age and in Jormsen that means you have to be close because you're raised together." Hákon knows this. She's told him bits and pieces about how things work so he isn't overwhelmed and who knows what talk goes on in the communal barracks they stay in because he's a well liked, friendly young man that everyone gets on with so there's possibly more that he knows but won't tell her about. He's allowed that. Sometimes all they have are their secrets and nowhere makes you more painfully aware of that than Jormsen. "But he came back and he knew, he _knew_ ," oh and sometimes she is furious at him over what might have been even though it's stupid, futile and because then she wouldn't have this life of happiness and freedom and she wouldn't have these dear boys, "what Maren was like and how she chafed against the life she was living so he told her everything about life beyond Jormsen. I'd never seen her light up the way she did, as though she was finally living instead of chasing shadows. They made plans. I think her parents were relieved she was showing interest in any man at that point and Halvard was considered a good catch, a solid provider. There weren't enough nobles to marry nobles to nobles, there never will be. It's just to keep the line going." Hákon opens his mouth and Gunhild just _knows_ what he'll ask and holds up her hand sharply. "Don't! Don't you ask why, that's a story for when you're bitter with grey in your hair."  
  
Hákon laughs and it breaks the tension enough to make her continue. Maren laughed a lot, Maren with her dreams and plans and stories.  
  
"Maren knew that everything was a lie, or not a lie, it's...she disagreed with it. She wanted another life and she saw a chance and begged me to come too, that she couldn't leave me there, that we'd all have another life together somewhere bright and warm. 'Let's leave this grey ruin behind us Gunhild' she said, right in the view of the Fangs, the oldest building in all Stjarnacado now, carved into the mountains from which Solace descended. It was her eyes, she was so _certain_ , so sure. I'd never seen her like that and before I knew what I was doing, I was taking her hand and packing my things." Now she can feel herself starting to shake as her throat closes in on itself, her heart roaring in her ears as her eyes blur. She hasn't wept in years but she's close now, remembering how naive they were, the pain of being lied to and just how lucky those not in Jormsen are to live the lives they lead. She doesn't know much about Rella Regnai in the west or Vaile in the east; the west is very closed to all, even more so than Jormsen and no one knows about the east because those who go east never come home. She knows that well.  
  
"You don't need to keep going, I can see how hard this is," Hákon says gently, reaching out to squeeze her hand.  
  
She shakes her head, sniffs and forces herself to sit up straighter. "No, I've let this lie and fester far too long. We packed that night. There was no one to say goodbye to – our parents save Maren's had passed on, there had been hard winters, little food, bolder wild beasts and illness. You've seen that here only with floods and storms instead of ice and snow, things that linger in bad water and even our magic can only do so much."  
  
"So you left in the night?"  
  
"Ferrum's hammer no! We left in the day, said we were going hunting. You don't leave at night unless you need the cover of darkness, too easy to make mistakes, you know that." Hákon nods and she smiles, remembering the headiness of it, leaving everything behind, off into the unknown with her friends by her side ignoring duty and responsibility. She doesn't, or can't, tell him just how good it felt when she knows she's perhaps sending him down a road Maren wouldn't approve of but Maren isn't here and Hákon is the one who wanted to become a Dragon Knight from the first story he was ever told. "They came after us but Dagny was better and knew how to hide our tracks. By the time we got to Moja, both her and Maren were pregnant."  
  
Hákon looks embarrassed, the way anyone would when hearing any implication of their parents' sex life. "Did they wonder?"  
  
"No. They asked but they knew by then, it's why Moja takes in so many people – they know they've come from somewhere they're not allowed to be themselves, where they have to obey other rules. They took us in, made them comfortable and I found a place here."  
  
"So why didn't they stay?" It's a plaintive little plea that breaks her heart because it's so foolish, that they left one place where you didn't raise your own children only for them to all leave.  
  
"Maren couldn't. She tried, oh she tried for you but she had to go – she wanted to know what was east, she was obsessed with it, the idea that all the answers would lie to the east."  
  
"When you go east, you never come home."  
  
Everyone knows it. It doesn't make it any easier to hear it coming from his lips. She just nods and sighs and lets herself hate Maren for leaving even if Maren was in love with the idea of adventure and she couldn't force her into a role that wasn't hers. Dagny and Orvar stayed but died when Brynjar was small and she tells him about how they went north again to trade and never came back because they didn't share that same dream as Maren, not the way Halvard did. She doesn't romanticise it because she thinks it's suicidal, stupid and reckless but it was Maren's dream and leaving Jormsen was meant to let them follow their dreams and pick their own paths, stupid as they were. Hákon and Brynjar at seventeen seem older somehow in a way they didn't. Jormsen's become harder now. They changed it when they left and it's why she makes the pilgrimage back with prospective knights and why she didn't try to dissuade the boys. She always love the north and it's in her blood and bones enough to cancel out the resentment.  
  
At last it's all out there and Hákon does something he hasn't done in years – he hugs her tight, bending so he can press his head against her shoulder and she rubs circles on his back, holding the tears back even when the fabric his face is against dampens. She lets him get it out because it's a lot, it's so much more than he ever knew and he needs time to process it all and she's willing to accept whatever reaction he has but when he pulls back, he wipes his face, sniffles and draws himself up.  
  
"I need- I need to talk to Bryn," he chokes out and she nods.  
  
"Take your time. Hákon-"  
  
"Thank you. For telling me. I think I understand, I just need-" he breaks off again, fresh tears threatening and he goes straight back to his room as soon as she lets him out. She's the one to go downstairs and get Brynjar, telling him to go to Hákon and he's concerned but masks it well, nodding and leaving her to join the others where she pretends to be there but her mind is upstairs with those boys and all those old painful truths she's set loose into the world.  
  
Before she goes to bed that night she patrols the hall of the tavern in her bare feet, shifting her weight to ensure she doesn't wake anyone from the aged and warped floorboards creaking under her feet. She pauses at each door, listens for the quiet breathing and rustling of fabric. When she reaches Hákon and Brynjar's room, she hears whispers as Hákon recounts the story of this evening and she should tell them to get some sleep when they'll be stumbling around in the morning, bleary eyed and grumpy but she can't. They need to talk about this and it might be one of the last nights of calm they'll get the closer they get to Jormsen. She raps the door once, listens to them frantically shushing each other, then shuffles down the hall. The whispers start up when she creeps back the way she came and to her own room. She smiles. They've got each other, they'll be fine and their parents, wherever they are, will be proud of them.


End file.
